Mike Mariano

mikemariano.com presents:

True Playwright Confessions

This weekend I came across the code of a few programs I wrote in QBASIC at the tender age of fifteen. This was the twilight of my programming career, but the beginning stages of my career writing for the stage.

After learning BASIC, I created a few “Choose Your Own Adventure”-styled games with my cousins. They featured film noir parodies, imitation Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure time travel exploits, and a high-concept text adventure concerning a fictional attempted assassination of John Major! I also copied a blackjack program from 3-2-1 Contact magazine that I could never get to work.

The program I’m most proud of is an RPG in miniature that I created from scratch. Just a few stages more complex than Progress Quest, it allowed a player to press the arrow keys to move up and down a “map” (represented by a set of coordinates). As the player moved, he entered into random battles and encountered traveling salesmen. There wasn’t much to do besides kill monsters, win gold, spend the gold on healing potions, and continue killing—essentially, I was creating my own Diablo years ahead of time.

I abandoned the program before adding specific locations and actual goals, but I did write an introduction to the game and its fantasy world. I also created a scripted encounter for my role-playing hero upon his arrival at a specific location. These prose sections were written in haste as a proof of concept; they were never meant to be serious writing. With time, they have gone from mildly embarrassing to completely hilarious. Let me present selections from RPG2.BAS!

After 2 years in the dungeon of the dragon/man Geess, you are finally released and sent home thinnly [sic] armed to your castle. Something isn’t right though. The sky is more smoke-filled [sic] and redder than before. Then you realize the truth; your land has been abandoned and has fallen into ruin. Depending only on an old map and a few potions for survival, you must figure out what threw your land into dispair. [sic]

Press Q to return to the options menu

And another:

After the wizard Tuhess turned the inhabitants of the castle to stone, the dwarves of an allied kingdom sent some of their finest warriors to protect the castle from invading monsters. Some dwarves greet you as you come up to the castle’s gates. The leader of the soldiers, Denman Wyndag, speaks with you in the main tent.

“Greetings, warrior!” he says to you, “We have awaited your arrival. My warriors know of a wizard who may be able to break the spell on this castle. His name is Cagdeb, and was last seen in the Swamp Tunnels.”

He marks the location of the tunnels on your map and wishes you luck as you leave the castle, wounds healed.

What vivid writing! I could have been that Eragon kid!

mikemariano.com presents:

True Playwright Confessions

Last month I saw The Pillowman at George Street Playhouse. I think I didn’t like it.

But my judgment may not be well-qualified, because every time they referenced one particular murder:

Katurian She’s buried out by the old wishing well.

I heard:

Terence Trent D’Arby WISH ME LOVE A WISHING WELL! TO KISS AND TELL!

And this is a plot point! They say “wishing well” a lot!

Detective So what will we find when we go out to this wishi—

Terence Trent D’Arby HUH WISHING WELL! OF BUTTAHFLY TEEEARS!

Every time they did that, I missed another five minutes.

Maybe The Pillowman is more than a pleasant romp through child murder and police brutality. Maybe the play even makes a legitimate case for the power of storytelling. You know, like it promises to.

If does, I was too busy rockin’ out to The Artist Currently Known As Sananda Maitreya to notice.

Bonus: Extra points to anyone who gets “Sign Your Name” stuck in their head during performances of The Miracle Worker.

mikemariano.com presents:

True Playwright Confessions

Today I was accidentally given the opportunity to read another playwright’s personal notes.

I didn’t know I was being invasive—I thought I was reading a script! But soon the author’s character names disappeared, unexplained abbreviations began to form, and a few pages later the entire narrative was gone. I was reading pure, unrefined playwriting thought.

As a playwright, this notetaking process is very familiar to me. When I write on the computer, I leave half-formed thoughts on the bottom of the page as I chisel away at the play itself on top. Finished prose stays above the cursor. Stray thoughts swim below. For this author I was now below the cursor.

I thought it was interesting that some of the notes consisted of short scenes of dialogue with no character names. Was this his way of generating dialogue at a speed closer to normal conversation? It was still obvious which line belonged to which character; the playwright or an editor could easily go back and assign the lines. Perhaps if I’m ever burdened with having too much in my head to write down, I’ll consider this method.

The remaining notes were familiar to me: underlined themes, character descriptions below that have been turned into dialogue above. Brief research. And, as always, one-liner jokes that are too good to leave unwritten.

There were only a few moments in which the author’s voice became very unfamiliar to me. It became a voice of God. Which is correct, but weird. I don’t write my notes that way.

How do I write them? Sometimes they’re just gag reels. Sometimes I create an outline on the computer and then merely make notes in the margins of my notebook. And sometimes, very rarely, I just start writing the play.

Enough talk: you deserve a firsthand look at what I do. My most impressive notes are for my play Menage a Sartre. A shamelessly pornographic play gave me a perfect excuse to “research” my work on a number of different websites. I also incubated a collection of jokes, naughty and nice. And now I’m going to share them with you:

Menage a Sartre—Notes

Enjoy this journey below the cursor.